So I was watching Grindhouse as I mentioned in an earlier post and they reference a movie called Vanishing Point several times. I IMDBed and it seemed like a classic film that I had some how completely missed. Well I watched it last night and I was pretty much blown away. The film was shot by the same guy who shot Chinatown, John Alanzo and it showed. I thought the film was absolutely stunning. The story is basically about a guy (Kowalski) driving as fast as he can across America, mostly just to piss off the man. It was clearly made on the coat tails of Easy Rider but I found it more accessible and much more watchable than Monty Hellman’s Two Lane Black Top, which I loved. There are a lot of great 70’s car films, but with the exception of Death Race 2000 (top 25 movies of all time in my mind) it is probably my favorite. Cleavon Little is so good as a blind DJ, leading Kowalski through his adventure by playing amazing music and damning the man. Anyway, it’s great, put it on your Netflix list today. Yeah. Existential car chases to the max.

Also, the trailer is mind blowing. Check it:

Colon Movie Film For Theaters… was not as good as I had hoped.  I used to be a die hard Aqua Teen fan.  I have all the DVDs and I watched the show religiously.  Then I moved and didn’t buy cable and I just sort of stopped watching it.  I don’t think I had seen an episode in two years before watching the movie.  I don’t know if I am just tired of the show, or if the movie was just not that great.  I expected to laugh through the whole thing.  I didn’t.  In fact I sort of got pissed off that all the people in the theater were laughing at some of the dumbest jokes I have ever seen on the silver screen.  That being said, it was still pretty damn funny at parts.  Everything with Carl was great, and the MC Pee Pants appearance got an ovation.  (speaking of which, DJ John of mc chris (who voices Pee Pants) showed up in my party pictures from High Voltage Wednesday night)  So yeah, if you are at all a fan of the show, go see it, otherwise I wouldn’t bother, it is no Reno 911, although it has a better poster.

On Thursday I went to a preview of Grindhouse. It was clearly amazing. I mean I am pretty much obsessed with exploitation film so I knew I would love it. I did. In case you live underground Grindhouse is two feature length films, Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez and Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino. The film also features several fake “Coming Attractions” directed by film makers such as Eli Roth and Rob Zombie. The movies are digital scratched and the sound is distorted in order to give the films a 70’s exploitation feel. In both films reels are “missing”, which caused some of the biggest laughs of the film.

Although I am a much bigger fan of Tarantino than I am Rodriguez, I thought Planet Terror was the best of the two. It was pretty much a zombie genre picture with tons of action and over the top violence. Freddy Rodriguez was great as Wray, a tow truck driver with a secret past. The movie has every thing you need in a movie, zombies, dismemberment, half naked women with guns, Tom Savini… Also it answers the question “What happened to Bin Ladin?” evidently Bruce Willis killed him.

Death Proof had a lot more sound distortion and a lot less grain and scratches than Planet Terror did, and it was a lot more distracting. Tarantino’s sound track was pretty superb again, but the sound distortion made it nearly unlistenable. On top of that I felt the film was a bit masturbatory, even for QT. It was mostly hot girls and car chases. Contrary to what I just said I think it was too dialogue heavy to feel like an authentic grindhouse film. And my final complaint was that Kurt Russell shouldn’t cry. Ever. Snake doesn’t cry. Captain Ron doesn’t cry. The girl I saw the film with liked that part the most because it was so unexpected, but fuck that, Big Trouble should have killed all the girls one handed. That being said, I still loved the movie. The car chases were great, Kurt Russell has been brought back from the dead like QT did for Travolta and Carradine. The soundtrack is amazing and casting a real stunt woman to do real stunts in the film was a great choice.

Anyway, see Grindhouse ASAP. It was way dope.